Elb versus the Aliens ...

Fading glory
Originally uploaded by elb_the_prof

It's said that you should do something every day that scares you. Somewhat lethargic in the fright department, I have just had enough terror to suffice for months.

I have just done battle with The Refrigerator.

Inspired by a Flickr group entitled ‘I dare you ...’ I decide to take a photo of the contents of my fridge. A simple matter, if not a little quirky, but hey - I like quirky, and am oft considered simple, so I should fit right in. Prising open the door with some effort, it seems that the inhabitants of my ice box are somewhat reluctant to be photographed, and fight valiantly to keep the door firmly closed. That should give me a clue to what horrors lurk within, but I am unprepared for the scale of the biological war being waged inside ... Behind the packages of meat and butter, entire new life forms have come into being as vile vegetables mutate into a primordial soup, festering tentacles reaching out to enfold the newcomers stuffed unthinkingly into their clutches as I throw fresh fodder in after a trip to the supermarket. No way on EARTH can I present that to the world!

I roll up my sleeves and don a hastily concocted biohazard suit, prop the door open with a broom (those suckers really DON’T want to come out!) and set to evicting the unwelcome mutants into a quarantine zone. Ignoring the shrieks of protest, I pry a slimy parsnip off the back of the fridge, but it fights back viciously and slithers slickly through my fingers before escaping a la baby Alien from John Hurt’s tum and vanishing under the cupboards ...

At last, a steaming pile of toxic gunk sits atop my kitchen counter, and the inside of my fridge has been decontaminated with every cleaning product known to man - and then some. I wrestle the squeaky-clean shelving back in situ, then discover that replacing the drastically depleted contents takes about four seconds flat. Barely a handful of still-edible fodder has survived....

As I wrap the putrefying detritus in lead-lined bin bags, spores from a mouldy squash drift lazily onto the floor where the cat sits watching my efforts with suspicion, and the seeds for feline vege-mutation are sown...